The real reason I keep coming back to poems at dark, profound or troubled moments, is this:
What I gain from poetry is wisdom.
Not the kind of "deep thoughts" you glean from Oprah or Dr. Phil or chicken soup for the sentimental soul. This is the stuff that's always hard-won, the kind of thing you only win by losing.
Three weeks ago my oldest friend Raudy Steele died of a heart attack at the age of 30. We met when we were barely 13. In a few weeks he was going to drive from New Mexico to Seattle for a U2 concert with me. Instead he died, most likely in his sleep.
I've never been in mourning before, and I had all the typical but still unexpected reactions: doubt, confusion, resentment, survivor's guilt, shock. I didn't know what to say, what to think, what was right or proper or expected. I didn't know how to honor his memory, commemorate our friendship.
So I did what I always do: I tried to find something to read. This is what I found.
In Memoriam: Preface
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
On my porch — simultaneously weeping, smoking, drinking and praying — this poem was the only thing that spoke to me. It didn't comfort me or ease my pain, which in any case I had no wish to be eased. But it struck me with the strength that only truth has.
I'd hate to think that this makes poetry just literary self-help, something like Zig Ziglar meets the most well-worn Robert Frost lines. But there's a reason psalms aren't written in prose, there's a reason proverbs are poems in miniature. Sometimes you need that small, sharp spike of wisdom honed to a needle point.
Raudy wasn't one for poetry much. I didn't spend enough time around him to bug him with my mania for verse. But now my memories of him and Tennyson's of his dead soulmate Arthur have some invisible linkage. And sooner or later all poems are conversations with the dead. "In Memoriam" gave me something to start the conversation with.
It's sad that a blog post is all I have to honor him, but that which I have I give.
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